News Discontenthttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com
The world of news from the world of the people.Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:04:47 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngNews Discontenthttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com
Reasons The United Kingdom Is Screwed This Election.https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/reasons-the-united-kingdom-is-screwed-this-election/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/reasons-the-united-kingdom-is-screwed-this-election/#respondSun, 23 Apr 2017 11:20:30 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=406Last week, Theresa May triggered a general election after denying she planned to do so. That’s the latest in a long list of lies from the Prime Minister, but that’s another story entirely. On June 8th, the country will go to the polls to decide a new Government for this country, and decide whether they want the Christian that doesn’t seem to really give a damn about other people like her religion says she should, or a man who means well but doesn’t have practical experience of running in positions of power having spent almost the entirety of his political life on the back benches.

Bit of a duff choice, you may think. But if you truly believe that Corbyn isn’t a viable option, let me outline why the country is pretty much screwed under a Conservative Government.

Hard Brexit. It’s the biggest electoral bullet, and will likely blow all other national issues (the sort of issues people should REALLY care about) out of the water in the publicity run-up to the election. Theresa May will protest as loudly as she can that she will get a “good deal” for the country. But the hard and fast truth is that whatever deal we get from leaving the EU, it simply won’t be even the slightest bit as good as the deal we have from being a member of the European Union. And we even risk leaving with nothing at all.

Education. The Conservative plans to bring back Grammar schools in a big way was lauded (by them) as a way to narrow the class gap, when all the evidence points to it doing the exact opposite. At this point any Tory voter should be smelling a rat, and asking their party to justify fully their plans.

Healthcare. Under the Conservatives, waiting list targets have been dropped, missed and changed. Spending, regardless of what the Government will say, has been slashed. Contracts are handed out to the likes of Virgin Healthcare like confetti, and contracts have been cancelled when private companies have realised there’s no profit to be made from them. This mostly impacts care in the community, care for older people, and mental healthcare. Oliver Letwin said, before the last election, that within a few years of a Tory Government, the NHS would not exist. Mental healthcare has suffered hugely under this Government, with funding for providers being slashed heavily. It seems this Government doesn’t see mental health as a real issue.

Immigration. The Conservatives have been on the run ever since people stupidly began to give now-seven-time electoral failure Nigel Farage extended media coverage. And it has impacted Labour too, with their 2015 manifesto promising controls on immigration showing their fear of losing voters to the purple of UKIP. But controls on immigration are based on, frankly, xenophobia. Immigration has brough FAR more benefits to this country than any perceived problems people say it has caused. And if we close our borders at Brexit, who will serve your coffee, who will pour your pint, who will clean your toilets, who will wipe your bottom in hospital? Because you can be bloody sure that today’s overly-entitled Brit children won’t be considering it, because they think it’s beneath them. As an afterthought, who can forget those “Go Home” vans?

Taxation. The Tories tried to raise National Insurance this Parliament, but had to wirhdraw it when it was noted that they actually pledged not to make any rises to National Insurance. Council tax is a hot topic as well, with Surrey County Council allegedly receiving a sweetheart deal from the Government allowing them to get more central funding without having to call a local referendum to raise their council tax charges.

These are just some of the most important issues facing this country on June 8th. But you can bet your bottom dollar the only one that it will actually be fought on is Brexit. Because that’s pretty much the only thing people actually care about right now. They may claim to care about healthcare, education, welfare, job security and all that, but really they don’t actually care that much at all, especially if it doesn’t immediately affect them. We are a nation of NIMBYists, and if an issue isn’t affecting us or our own, we simply do not care.

People also tend not to change a Government on subjective issues, rather more large-scale issues tend to see Governmental change. 1974’s three day week led to a Labour Government. Thatcher’s victory in 1979 was down to the Winter Of Discontent. Blair’s landslide win in 1997 was down to sleaze allegations throughout the Tory party of the time. In 2010 it was the bank crisis that led to a Governmental change. What do all of these have in common? Well, the media. All of them were turned into single-issue elections because of the way they were covered through the press. And all of them were fought based on competence to run Government, not the actual issues themselves.

This, to me, is the main reason the country is screwed if it chooses to elect another Tory Government. Because if we cannot make people care about issues without a national scandal, how do we convince them that they should reject this Conservative Government?

At the end of the day, it is highly likely that the election on June 8th will result in a Conservative Government again. People will blame Corbyn, people will blame whatever they can, but the simple fact of the matter is that Theresa May hasn’t proven herself incompetent enough to warrant removing, in the eyes of the people, or the media. When we learn that, we can finally start formulating a way to get Labour into Government, and to keep them there.

Vote Labour. Do your best to convince people that a Labour Government is the best thing for this country right now. But don’t be disheartened, or distracted by the blame game when the Tories win.

To give a bit of an idea of how our whole political system works – it is split into three core areas; the Executive (basically the Government and its ministers), the Legislature (the remaining MPs who are not serving ministers in the Government and who vote on proposed laws), and the Judiciary (the courts and judges who apply the law set by the Executive and Legislature). This is how the separation of powers in the UK works. In this situation, the Judiciary has ruled that the Executive cannot bypass the Legislature when invoking Article 50 – in effect, it has to pass a law in order to invoke Article 50.

Now there are many who are screaming (as we see above) that the High Court is out of bounds by insisting that this be the case, despite the fact that it is established in the way our democracy works. We have people complaining against “unelected judges” – effectively conflating two separate issues, namely the position of the House of Lords (which up until 2009 held the unique position of serving both Legislature and Judiciary functions until the Judiciary was spun out into the Supreme Court), and the positions of judges in the court system. The Judiciary is designed to be independent, so that it can operate without accusations of political interference. It is supposed to operate to apply the law without bias, and without outside pressure. Because our law is a common law system, it uses precedents as well as statute in order to apply judgment, and that is what happened here. The judges decided that the Government’s legal arguments did not apply in this case, and that Parliament must be involved in the process of invoking Art.50.

Let’s imagine for a second that we did have elected judges. On what basis do we elect them? Their legal expertise? Their political leaning? Their popularity? Let’s face it, we live in a country that will vote for a tawdry stereotyping parody act in a popularity contest, so can we really be trusted to elect people into highly complicated, highly important positions?

The whole Brexit thing has been a complete shambles. From the referendum campaign based on no facts whatsoever (Hello Mr Gove, still sick of “experts”?), based on outright lies (Oh hi, NHS bus), and based on exploiting the prejudices of people (I see you there pointing at dirty immigrants, Nigel!), to the aftermath where the financial markets delivered its verdict on Brexit (goodbye cheap holidays, hello expensive imports), this has been a shining example on what happens when people don’t have the right information to make an unbiased decision. And what happens when voters are treated with contempt by those who think they are actually ruling by law rather than following the rule of law.

The next step will be interesting, to say the least – the Art.50 ruling only affects whether the Government can trigger the article without the consent of Parliament. What happens after that are the negotiations for trade deals, between companies and countries. The Government has already had discussions with Nissan, but won’t tell us what they said in those discussions that led to Nissan deciding to keep production in Sunderland. I foresee the next court challenge being about the level of Government negotiations, and whether they have the power to do so without consulting Parliament. Because we cannot return to the days of backroom deals – these negotiations need proper scrutiny. And that is what we must remind our MPs.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/brexit-bloody-useless/feed/0thatpeskysquirrelLabour Has A Problem.https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/labour-has-a-problem/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/labour-has-a-problem/#respondThu, 28 Apr 2016 14:37:34 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=342The events of the last few days have thrown Labour into massive disarray, with MP Naz Shah being suspended over comments made on social media before she was an MP, and for which she apologised. This has been followed with Red Ken Livingstone leaping to her defence on BBC Daily Politics, using ill-advised words about Hitler being a Zionist “before he went mad”. Now, it is well-known that Red Ken is a highly divisive character, or at least it should be after previous faux-pas such as describing a donation to Dan Jarvis as like “Jimmy Savile funding a children’s party”, or comparing a journalist with a “Concentration Camp guard”. But the reaction to this furore is way overboard for what is essentially foot-in-mouth from both.

Currently, Labour are being accused of having a problem with anti-Semitism. This may be true, this may be false. It is unclear as to the extent of any problem that may be inherent within the party. But what is clear is that if there is any inherent anti-Semitism, it will have existed long before Jeremy Corbyn took over as leader. What is also clear is that those shouting loudest now are the same that shouted loudest about how Corbyn would destroy the party during the leadership campaign. Self-fulfilling prophecy?

Right now, the right-wing media and the Tories are having a field day – instead of being held to account for failures of policy, they’re able to get away scot-free whilst the Labour party continues to internally combust. It seems as though some in the party would rather see Labour fail just to see Corbyn fail, than see Labour win with Corbyn leading.

We are currently in the middle of a London Mayoral campaign, which is one of the nastiest campaigns seen in a long time, with accusations of Islamophobia aimed at the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith. In recent weeks, the Goldsmith campaign has tried to paint Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate, as someone who consorts with alleged terrorist sympathisers, and has even had support in this from the Prime Minister. Yet we hear rarely a peep from the media, and those who are now screaming their heads off within Labour. Can Labour really be in this much disarray so close to vital local elections? When the incumbent Government is under so much pressure for failed policy lines in Health, Education and its stance on the EU? Is there any way for Corbyn to quell this discontent? Probably. But it involves him quitting as leader of the party, such is the weakness of his position currently. Would this solve Labour’s woes? Very unlikely – we’d see an exodus of support that Corbyn’s leadership brought in, and we’d see another campaign led by faceless nobodies who don’t offer anything different to Labour of the past 20 years. The exception being if Dan Jarvis decided to step up to the plate. A commanding speaker, a figure both sides of the House can respect, and one that could truly unite the Labour left and right.

Until then though, we are likely to see a Labour Civil War, with battle lines drawn clearly between Corbyn’s Left and the Labour Right. This has no benefit whatsoever for the nation, and serves only to strengthen an ineffectual Conservative Government and a lame duck Prime Minister. And why the sudden shock over Ken Livingstone? Red Ken’s been saying much the same old rubbish for almost the entire last 30 years, and we’re to believe it’s only now that certain elements of Labour have noticed how shocking what he can say is? To me this stinks of political expedience from those who want to use anything as a stick to beat Corbyn with. And that tells me all I need to know about the Labour Party as it stands today.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/labour-has-a-problem/feed/0thatpeskysquirrelThe “Terror” Dilemmahttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/the-terror-dilemma/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/the-terror-dilemma/#commentsThu, 10 Dec 2015 13:10:50 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=298It has been 14 years since the 9/11 terror attacks forced the West to launch the “War On Terror”. So how’s it going?

Well, over that period we’ve managed to remove dictators and secure oil supplies for the West – we’ve destabilised the Middle East to such a degree that power vacuums appeared, and were filled by people who many say may be worse than the people they replaced. In Iraq, we removed Saddam Hussein and attempted to install the kind of democracy that the West thinks is the perfect model for the world. In Libya, we killed Muammar Gaddafi and didn’t even bother trying to ensure a stable interim period whilst a new regime took hold. And now, in Syria, we’re determined to make the exact same mistakes as in the past – but we’re expecting a different result.

The justification for the UK Government’s involvement in air strikes through Syria is flimsy at best – from Cameron’s “70,000 moderate fighters” claim, to his assertion that up to seven terror attacks were stopped that were linked to Daesh in Raqqa. This was used as the primary justification – that we should bomb Daesh in Syria in order to keep ourselves safe in the UK. Which for me just completely ignores the entire way that any ideology works. You can kill a jihadist, but you cannot kill the idea that jihadist was loaded with.

The attackers in Paris were almost exclusively French/Belgian nationals. The man who knifed someone in a London Underground was a British national known to have mental health issues. The couple who carried out the San Bernardino shooting – one was a US-born resident, the other a Pakistani-born Saudi resident. Most attacks designated as “terror” attacks (the Paris attack aside) are lone wolf attacks – where people who have fallen for the online presence of Daesh are convinced that their own actions are the right thing to do. I think we are too quick to denote attacks as “terror” attacks, yet when a white gunman attacks a Planned Parenthood clinic for religious and political reasons, this isn’t designated a “terror” attack. Is this because of the inherent racism of white middle-class people around the world?

This is a heck of a lot more complicated than just bombing Syria and that being the end of it.

But that complication is a big red flashing sign pointing at our leaders and pointing out that they are deliberately ignoring the best method for reducing Daesh’s threat. We need to change the way we think about the whole situation – we need to reverse the current media agenda of fear and mistrust. We need to get people to understand that bombing Syria only appeases the “DO SOMETHING!” brigade (who include the Prime Minister in their number, thanks to his “If you don’t back military action you’re a terrorist sympathiser” rant), who think that those who don’t want military action in Syria obviously don’t want the West to do anything at all.

We need to understand that Daesh is supported financially by people who are allegedly allies of the West. The Turkish shot down a Russian fighter-bomber on the Syria border alleging that the jet had breached Turkish airspace, and that they were within their rights to shoot down this jet. The West has quickly lined up with Turkey, in their refusal to condemn the action, and the alleged failure to make radio or visual contact prior to the takedown. The Russians are alleging that they never entered Turkish airspace, and that their plane was shot down over Syrian airspace. Further to this, President Putin is alleging that the jet may have been shot down because it was tracking an oil shipment heading from Daesh-controlled Syria into Turkey to be sold on the black market. On a side note, Turkey recently arrested two journalists on charges of treason after they searched a Turkish security forces vehicle heading for Syria and found it to be loaded with weapons, again allegedly heading for Daesh forces.

On the other side of the Middle East, it is alleged that rich Saudi individuals are funding Daesh in an effort to ensure the region stays unstable, in an effort to spread their Wahhabist Islam ideology through the region. Saudi Arabia is one of the UK’s biggest arms clients, buying jets, missiles and weapons from UK arms dealers (with the Government’s blessing), and using these to strike down Yemeni military, and not caring how many citizens they take out in the process.

Is it right that we align ourselves with these nations? Should we not be applying pressure to them to ensure they are not supporting Daesh? Or is it more important to ensure that money keeps coming in for arms purchases, as well as ensuring that the pipeline of oil through Turkey is maintained? Why does our Government not acknowledge that these nations are key to defeating Daesh in the region? Surely money isn’t more important than safety?

So how should the world be going after Daesh?

Simple – starve their financial support in the region, and starve their internet access worldwide. Instead of applying lazy dragnet-style monitoring of internet traffic, it’s time our intelligence services started using much more targeted surveillance methods. Terrorists aren’t using Facebook Messaging, or BBM, or Whatsapp etc. to plan attacks. They’re not that stupid. The lone wolves that ARE that stupid are usually stopped, as shown by the “seven blocked attacks” claimed by the UK Government. We need to apply huge pressure to Turkey, to Saudi Arabia, to Qatar and Kuwait – pressure designed to ensure that they take every single effort to freeze assets of people known to be funding Daesh, or buying oil from Daesh-controlled wells. We need to put pressure on banks known to be allowing funds to pass through their accounts on its way to Daesh. We need to break the inherent attitude that profit makes everything okay.

We need to reduce the efficacy of their propaganda – Daesh relies on fear and mistrust of Muslims to turn people towards their way of thinking. As long as we keep spreading the idea that Muslims worldwide are to be feared and hated, we are doing Daesh’s job for them. It is very easy to run stories that portray Muslims of the world in a good light, yet the press chooses not to do so – instead it chooses to propagate its agenda by telling outright lies. It knows it can do so because if caught it can print a tiny retraction or apology that nobody will actually read (see The Sun’s recent liepiece on how easy it is to travel through Europe unchecked). Thus the lie is propagated, and the job is done.

Changing this way of thinking is not going to be easy. But it is what must be done, if we are to defeat the divisionary ideology of Daesh. We must realise that Muslims are not an enemy to be feared or defeated. We must hold our media to account when they try to spread anti-Muslim propaganda.

Above all, we need to make sure we are making the Muslim communities around us feel welcomed, and part of our society. The usual word is “tolerance”, but I hate that word – it suggests the target of “tolerance” is something to be endured, to be put up with, to be tolerated. The better word is “acceptance”. Treat all of our minorities with acceptance, not just tolerance. With love, not just endurance. Hatred cannot be destroyed with further hatred. Fear cannot be dispelled with further fear.

Only with love, can hate be defeated.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/the-terror-dilemma/feed/4thatpeskysquirrelDebunking The Benefits Rowhttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/debunking-the-benefits-row/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/debunking-the-benefits-row/#respondMon, 17 Feb 2014 23:05:58 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=225Righto then, not blogged in a while, but given the seemingly worrying state of attitudes in our country, I think it’s about time I joined in. Over the past few weeks, Channel 4 and Channel 5 have both been stirring the festering pot of hate that the right-wing press are aiming at people who claim benefits – anyone would think it was their fault the economy is shot to buggery…

There are a lot of assumptions and assertions about the whole welfare bill that need to be addressed fairly and properly by all concerned in Government, and indeed in the media at large, but apparently booking a studio full of shouters and foghorns is much more important than any attempt at balanced discussion. Katie Hopkins, who sees illness as a failure in her own life, generally tends to be the showpiece wheeled out in these things, displaying a hugely ignorant “MY OPINION IS RIGHT, YOURS IS WRONG, AND SO I WILL SHOUT LOUDER THAN YOU IN ORDER TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT YOUR OPINION ISN’T WORTH AIRING” attitude towards anyone who questions her beliefs. Whilst she is adamant that her own points be heard, as soon as anyone with dissenting points gets a chance to talk she will talk right over them in order to make sure her voice is the only one that is heard. My nephew has better manners than her, and that’s because he’s been brought up correctly, to speak in turn and respect other people’s opinions.

The main problem we have with the debate on welfare is when the vile rag The Express puts out splash headlines like this:

(Daily Express, 2011)

I won’t go into why that figure is misleading here (the work has already been done many times over, including here), the important thing is the attitude this type of headline breeds into a certain group of people (namely the bloody ignorant). If you say something often enough, in a certain tone, pretty soon people will start to believe it. So it’s absolutely no surprise that our “beloved” right-wing press do their utmost to properly hammer this one home day after day, week after week. Between the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, you can probably pick out a “scrounger” storyline every day of the week for the past few years.

It’s not helped by production companies coming up with programmes like “Benefits Street”…at first Channel 4 and Love Productions tried to claim it was a programme about how a community comes together in hard times, which is clearly bollocks because otherwise they wouldn’t have called it Benefits Street. But I digress…

Here’s some figures about welfare, no doubt already published many times, no doubt ignored by the right-wing many times…

Did you know that of the total welfare bill (£116.6 billion in 2013), the amount we spend on unemployment benefit is £5.9 billion (2013 budget). The total UK deficit (the difference between income and expenditure) is £96bn (2013 tax year to December – just 8 months, we’re predicted to have a full-year deficit of £167bn by April). Anyone want to educate me on how exactly the country’s debt will be erased by culling unemployment benefits?

In comparison, as part of the financial crisis, Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling approved a package of around £500bn in value aimed at rescuing the very banks that caused this crisis in the first place. Now not all of that is in direct financial injection, most of it is in the form of guarantees, but £50bn was still injected as liquid into the failing banks to rescue their cashflow situations. Now if we’d instead let Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds collapse, things may have appeared to be worse over the short-term – but in Iceland they had a similar situation, and instead of bailing out the banks, they jailed the bankers who caused the problems. Granted, there was provable fraud in that case, but it truly wouldn’t surprise me if the same happened in most banks throughout the world – indeed, the LIBOR scandal (with three former Barclays bankers charged today) shows just what banks are capable of in their efforts to maintain their wealth.

Do banks cull their failing staff? Nope – they get rewarded for failure instead. Know what the reason is for the continuing trend of high bonuses to people who nearly brought this country to its knees?

“If we are to act in the best interests of our shareholders, we have to make sure we have the best people in the firm,” Anthony Jenkins, Barclays Chief Executive

So bonuses increased…that must mean their performance was better, right?

Nope…Barclays pre-tax profits for 2013 fell from £7bn to £5.2bn – still a pretty successful year, unless you happen to be a low-level worker, in which case your job is under threat and you should look for work elsewhere. But with another 7000 people potentially hitting the dole queue, that could add up to a much harder time to find work for many people.

So what about doing what Katie Hopkins suggests, and getting a menial cleaning job, or work in a warehouse? Well, that’s one option – but do you think companies and agencies that hire cleaners and warehouse workers will take on people with 20 year work histories, or people with pretty major degrees? It’s not just a case of applying and getting a job – many people find themselves over-qualified for low-level positions, and are rejected by companies because of this. Yet we’re all told that we should all be out there cleaning or labouring? Sort it out, Hopkins.

Anyway – our economy is broken, but it’s not the people on welfare of any kind that broke it. It’s the people at the top of the banks. Think about that, next time you see a poorly-written splash headline designed to provoke outrage amongst the ignorant.

UPDATE:

Another thought occurs over the banking issue – know how we’re told that if we don’t allow bonuses we won’t attrace the best talent? My thinking is that if the “best” “talent” is capable of crashing the global economy, do we really want them? Wouldn’t we be better letting them go to wherever they can get their mercenary hands on the most cash for themselves, and we can instead rely on the people that won’t take extraordinary risks with money that isn’t theirs? Surely that’s better for this country than leaving it in the hands of people who exist solely to exploit its resources for their own personal gain?

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/debunking-the-benefits-row/feed/0thatpeskysquirrelImageThe “Free Press” Strikes Againhttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/the-free-press-strikes-again/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/the-free-press-strikes-again/#respondSat, 05 Oct 2013 10:25:23 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=222I’m not a prolific blogger, but every now and then a story arises that either piques my interest, or just gets the outrage flowing. Usually it’s the Daily Mail that is causing this outrage, as bile and hate flows (in my opinion) from its insidious pages. Over the past week, the story has been about the father of Ed Miliband and how he apparently “hated” Britain. Ralph Miliband’s crime, in the eyes of the Daily Mail as far as I can see, was to reject the capitalist political landscape being created post-war in favour of a more Marxist socialist future. Whether you agree with his politics or not, so far there’s not really anything that suggests he hated this country – the country he fled to when he feared persecution by Nazi Germany, let’s not forget. A diary entry, written when he was 16 (hardly a time to be judging people on their beliefs – I didn’t like tennis when I was 16…), states

“The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world… When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are.”

On the face of it, this is the entirety of the Daily Mail’s evidence about how Miliband Sr. hated this country. I still don’t get how they can claim that on that tiny level of evidence. Ralph Miliband, let’s not forget, served in the Royal Navy (would a Britain-hater fight to protect Britain?) and actively CHOSE to make this country his home (I’m sure the Daily Mail would have something to say about immigrants, but I’m not going to look for it). What the Mail also didn’t do was put the diary entry into context – a biography of Ralph Miliband stated

Miliband had been dismayed by the anti-Semitism he found in London. For example, he felt he was unable to tell his first girlfriend, Marjorie, that he was Jewish.

And with that context, you can see why 16-year old Ralph might have felt the way he did about the people around him. Let us not forget who played a large part in the feelings of anti-semitism in the country at the time – yes, that’s right, the good old Daily Mail, whose owner Viscount Rothermere was very much in support of the Nazi party of Germany, as this extract from 1933 clearly shows:

The German nation, moreover, was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements. In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were twenty times as many Jewish government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine. Three German ministers only had direct relations with the press, but in each case the official responsible for conveying news and interpreting policy to the public was a Jew.

That extract came from the same piece that excused Nazi atrocities as “a few isolated acts of violence”. Viscount Rothermere was an ardent supporter of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists – known colloquially as “Blackshirts”. The below is from the Mirror, which the Rothermere family also owned.

Viscount Rothermere later withdrew his support of this party – but do you think it was because of a change of heart in his political and ethnic feelings? No, of course not – it was because advertisers threatened to withdraw their adverts from his papers. His withdrawal of support for the Blackshirts was purely financial.

Now, I don’t know about you, but out of the two people , Viscount Rothermere and Ralph Miliband, I think it’s clear which side most definitely didn’t hate this country. Because as far as I can see it, no person who loves this country would actively wish Fascism upon it.

Recently, the Daily Mail tried to rebut these reminders of its own past by claiming they “were not relevant to the argument as Viscount Rothermere is dead and the comments were from 80 years ago”. Well, guess what, muckers, Ralph Miliband is also dead and made comments around 70 years ago (that the Daily Mail were more than happy to use in its attempt to smear Ed – yes, this was intended to be a dig at Ed Miliband rather than a serious political news article, as that’s how the Mail works) – I have no idea if that difference of ten years somehow makes one man’s adolescent diary entry relevant when an old man’s obvious political leanings from consistent newspaper articles are totally by the by. But I do know this – if I had the history of the Daily Mail, I wouldn’t be bringing up the past in the way they have done, because when you dig up the past, all you get is dirty.

Anyway, on to my next point – what about freedom of the press? Shouldn’t the press be free to print articles it believes is relevant to a political narrative? Short answer is maybe, but one thing I definitely think needs to happen is for the new regulator to have the power to compel editors to justify their stories in front of a televised panel. Because one thing the Daily Mail has continued to do throughout this whole charade is to dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge around any accusations that it has behaved massively unfairly. Of course, the Mail On Sunday does deserve a little credit because after it was reported that one of its journalists attempted to gatecrash a memorial service for one of Ed Miliband’s relatives in order to try to gain comment over Ralph Miliband (a step even the most rabid pressmonger realised was too far), it apologised and suspended the journalists involved. Now if only its big sister could be big enough to do the same, and admit it ran a very weak story with no real corroboration behind it solely as an attempt to smear Ed Miliband (guessing, quite wrongly, that he would stay silent in order to keep them on side). There is a campaign to get Paul Dacre, current editor of the Daily Mail, to appear himself and justify his story, and why he felt it was relevant. However, I do not expect for one second that Mr Dacre will have the courage to do so – far easier for him to send out his deputy editor, Jon Steafel, to defend it instead. And if anyone has any doubts, if the Mail DOES apologise at any stage for its smear on Ed, it will be through gritted teeth as it attempts to play the victim card…

There can be no doubt also that there will be more of this kind of story over the next 18 months

I have this nagging feeling that Mr Dacre believes the press should be beyond all interrogation, that the press should never have to face the kind of inquisitions that it forces other people to undergo if they happen to get on its wrong side in some way or another. This is done under the catch-all term of “press freedom”. And whilst I believe that it is good to have a press that prints stories it believes in, I also believe that we need to have a form of recourse for when they go too far, as in this case – it is essential that the new regulatory body has the power to compel editors to stand in front of a camera, and in front of a panel, and justify their stories. This does not hamper true press freedom, this enhances it. Because what it does is it allows actual proper investigative journalism to flourish, and forces papers to work properly.

I have no doubt there will be screaming about how this kind of plan would hamper freedom, but my answer is this: The press will still be free to print what they want, but they will have to be able to defend and justify it. If they fail to do so, then the regulatory body should have the power to force a full retraction and apology in equal prominence to the story that triggered the hearing. No more should “free press” be a licence to behave in any way they like. And the Daily Mail knows this kind of thing is coming, hence their “justification” based on the grounds that Leveson would gag them somehow.

Ed Miliband has won this battle – a glance around the internet suggests that people are siding more with him now, and that he appears stronger and a better candidate to lead because of this strength. So the Daily Mail rather shot itself in the foot, which is a happy outcome of their vicious smearing.

Game over, Mail. Your power will fade now that the people know exactly what you are. The politicians will be less afraid to stand up to your bullying. Time to grow up and become a REAL source of news.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/the-free-press-strikes-again/feed/0thatpeskysquirrelblackshirtsFreedom? Really?https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/freedom-really/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/freedom-really/#respondThu, 22 Aug 2013 00:09:14 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=160Yesterday afternoon, Private Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing top secret videos and memos of US forces’ illegal behaviour to Wikileaks (with Julian Assange currently sweating it out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London). Currently, Edward Snowden, a former CIA and NSA operative, is in hiding in Russia after releasing details of PRISM, an NSA program that is designed to monitor web usage of American citizens, alongside programs used to monitor US and European telecommunications data.

Earlier this week, David Miranda, partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained at London Heathrow for nine hours under UK anti-terror laws – specifically Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

All of this reveals a very worrying pattern of behaviour from international superpowers that have begun to believe the whole “superpower” moniker. I’m going to begin with my thoughts on Manning’s sentence – personally I don’t believe for one second he should be imprisoned for his actions in bringing to the public attention some of the horrific acts committed during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and mistreatment of prisoners kept in Guantanamo Bay. He is essentially being imprisoned for the crime of showing the world what the US can and will do if left unchecked and unmonitored. Manning risked his life to expose these acts, given that he could have faced a maximum penalty of death for “aiding the enemy”.

Edward Snowden, on the other hand, released information about how the US was using cutting-edge technology to monitor the communications of US citizens and European people through a number of programs such as PRISM, XKEYSCORE and Tempora. Numerous people have picked up on the manner of these releases to insinuate that Snowden must also have released US intelligence details regarding monitoring of Chinese and Russian communications, all from the countries he chose as bases to release this intel. Snowden was first in Hong Kong where he kept himself very much in the public eye due to a fear of assassination, before moving to Moscow. At the moment Snowden remains in Russia, granted temporary asylum for one year, but the general consensus is that he will attempt to head for Ecuador or Cuba and seek permanent asylum in those countries. Again, Snowden has revealed an intelligence community in the US that is so drunk with power, so unchecked that it feels able to abuse its own powers almost at will. This is not something that should be condemned, but of course the authorities will continue the line of “national security” when trying to prosecute Snowden for his quite frankly heinous crimes.

David Miranda is a little more intriguing. He is the husband of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, and was detained at Heathrow under suspicion of carrying sensitive and stolen CIA intel with the aim of delivering it to Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor. Mostly the outcry has been over whether the UK Police were correct in their use of Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act to detain and question Mr Miranda for nine hours. There has also been some concern over UK government pressure on the Guardian to destroy files relating to Ed Snowden and PRISM – David Cameron knew of the intent to detain Mr Miranda, and requested cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood to contact the Guardian with the intent of destroying or confiscating sensitive files from Snowden. From my point of view, our Government has a lot of explaining to do over its actions, because quite frankly it is precisely this kind of censoring of the free press that it apparently does not want to do after the phone hacking scandal. Funny how it’s a lot easier to censor media voices when they’re about to reveal serious State wrongdoing, isn’t it?

All in all, it is a very worrying trend of behaviour from the people we trust to run our countries, and trust not to control and monitor our lives. The problem is that the right-wing media has helped bring this on us through its vehement rhetoric of terror always just around the corner, and using of fear to press a certain agenda. Unfortunately, that agenda of fear has been pressed so much that now the Government uses strongarm tactics to bully sections of the media that actually want to investigate the things it SHOULD be investigating. And all we can hear from the right-wing, including Louise Mensch, is “Well done security forces, ensuring a safer country”. Well, the quote that springs to mind is that of Benjamin Franklin, and I’m sure it’s been published more and more with each passing day:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Franklin also published a similar quote that holds relevance here just as much:

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.

Very true – our leaders will sell our greatest assets to make themselves rich, and will have us all live in fear so that they may keep themselves in power. Let that be a lesson to this, and future, generations. If you let your leaders behave atrociously without question in the name of liberty, you will forever be stripped of your own personal civil liberties.

Wise up – let your country know who the boss is.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/freedom-really/feed/0thatpeskysquirrelThe Government Chosen By This Country – Destroying This Countryhttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/the-government-chosen-by-this-country-destroying-this-country/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/the-government-chosen-by-this-country-destroying-this-country/#commentsSun, 19 Feb 2012 05:30:26 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=151Over the past few days, weeks and months, there have been some incredibly insensitive, badly-thought-out and quite simply crass attempts by this Government (led by Conservatives, but aided and abetted by the Lib Dems) to change the whole fabric of this country to suit a few rich people in Whitehall and London’s business district. Most recently is the furore over the NHS reforms that virtually nobody in this country wants, nobody asked for and which will be steamrollered in by Cameron by any means necessary. Then there’s the welfare reforms that will lead to millions of genuinely disabled and ill people being forced to take up voluntary work of indeterminate length or risk losing their benefits. Then there’s the housing reforms that will lead to massive upheaval in many thousands of families throughout the country as the Welfare Office looks to reduce its bill without actually tackling any of the root causes of the rising bill. The list goes on and on.

I’ll start with the welfare reforms. Emma Harrison, major shareholder in A4e (formerly Action For Employment) was recently awarded a bonus by her board of almost £9m, depending on which source you read. A4e is one of the Government’s contracted private companies that provides help to people looking to get back into work, and ran the DWP’s Work Programme including schemes such as the New Deal scheme, and participates in the Government’s Workfare scheme. A4e have been involved in a number of damaging cases during its time as one of the DWP’s contracted suppliers, including in 2009 when it was investigated over accusations of fraud and in 2011 when it was forced to stop sanctioning jobseekers who requested representation when dealing with A4e (whilst also being admonished over the behaviour of some of its staff who allegedy told lies in order to impose sanctions on its clients.

Now, the company is tasked with helping people back into work by providing training, education and polishing other work-related skills – as well as helping to find employers who are looking for new workers. The fact is that it is most likely failing at this task. Most recent figures quoted to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) responsible for ensuring best value in contract dealings suggest that A4e was delivering a 9% rate of people finding work through its programmes, whereas A4e claim a 24.2% rate. Both way below the 30% target set by the DWP when awarding the contract to A4e. So why is Harrison able to claim a near-£9m bonus? Isn’t that rewarding failure, the very thing the Government said they did not want to do when they “tackled” the issue of banker bonuses? Now, A4e is a private company and as such is entitled to pay its staff whatever it likes, but it is using taxpayer’s money to do so. This is what the PAC is designed to investigate. Hopefully it will recommend that this company is not awarded any future contracts because of its lack of financial benefit to the country. But there’s a sticking point – the DWP cannot take past performance into account when awarding contracts. So we’re stuck with this useless bunch.

Anyway, onto part two of welfare reforms – the housing benefit reforms. Under the Localism Act, due to come into force this spring, councils will be granted the power to place people on housing lists into private accommodation – not necessarily in the area covered by that council. Croydon Council is already looking to rent private housing in Hull. Now, last I checked, Hull and Croydon aren’t exactly near neighbours of each other. People who apply for housing in Croydon should reasonably expect to be housed in Croydon or maybe another local borough if there isn’t enough housing within the borough. Forcing people to move to Hull because of a cost-saving drive is madness, and another example of the Government wanting to purge poor people from London and its surrounding areas. All just in time for the Olympics, the cynic in me notes.

The problem I have with the housing situation is that it is a problem almost entirely of the Government’s making. It was Thatcher’s administration who pioneered the “right to buy” scheme that allowed people to buy properties at less than half market value, and then did not allow councils to use the money brought in to replenish the lost housing stock. So we have a vast shortage of council-owned housing. We also have social housing companies, some charities, others private companies, that rent out social housing – but the Government pays out with virtually no return on this type of housing. In a council house, the council has to pay nothing other than maintenance on the houses it owns. No rent going out, because it owns the property. In non-council housing, the councils and the Government are having to pay out exceptionally large sums of money in local housing allowance to what are private landlords. In a council house, when someone returns to work they pay the council rent on their house. In social housing, the rent goes to the housing association. No money finds its way back to the council. This is insane. And we are told by Grant Shapps that it’s effectively our own fault for having the temerity to need to claim benefits. His claim is that “We need welfare reform to tackle Labour’s budget deficit, and a series of measures to tackle that soaring benefits bill”. It is clear that the Government’s intention is not to try to tackle the problem at root, by looking to increase employment levels – its intention is simply to put a sticking plaster on the problem and hope it goes away by itself, whilst also making those who have to claim feel like criminals for doing so.

It also introduces another problem. The effect of pushing unemployed people into areas where unemployment is already above national average is economic suicide for those areas. And possibly literal suicide for some of those who live in those areas. Another bright idea from the Government Of Thinking Things Through.

Finally (well, not finally, but finally for this blog piece), we have the NHS reforms. Andrew Lansley, a man with solid links to private healthcare providers, has drawn up a plan that requires GPs to use private healthcare providers where possible as he claims it will save money and increase quality of service. So absolutely no conflict of interest whatsoever there, is there Andrew? Bizarrely, David Cameron seems to be entirely blinkered to the fact that most people inside and outside the NHS do not want the reforms he is pushing. He seems to think that everyone is backing it, and those who are criticising it just don’t understand it. There is a round-table meeting organised this week, for Cameron to put his views across to healthcare organisations and unions about how he sees the reforms working. Only he seems to have forgotten to invite the people who criticise his plans the most. It’s a whitewash attempt, so he can come out of the meeting with many positive soundbites and he’ll be hoping nobody notices that none of the critics of the bill were there. Unfortunately for Dave, everyone has already noticed.

So we have a Government that is driven purely by ideology and by profit, and by the need to keep their paymasters happy. Is that really the way we want our country run? To paraphrase one of the Labour soundbites from the last election, There Must Be A Better Way. Now I’m not saying Labour provide that better way, what I am saying is this country needs a wholesale reform – not of the welfare system, or of the NHS, or of education – but of the political system. For too long, cronies have been parachuted into cushy seats and funded by conglomerates. For too long, our politicians have been too cosy with the media. For too long, our Governments have acted not in the best interests of the country, but in the best interests of themselves.

There MUST be a better way.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/the-government-chosen-by-this-country-destroying-this-country/feed/2thatpeskysquirrelInstant Media Raises Its Ugly Head Once Againhttps://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/instant-media-raises-its-ugly-head-once-again/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/instant-media-raises-its-ugly-head-once-again/#respondSat, 07 Jan 2012 01:29:50 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=146The latest hot topic in the footballing world right now is racism. We have Luis Suarez being found guilty of using insulting words with reference to race, and just this evening it is alleged that Oldham FC footballer Tom Adeyemi was racially abused by a member of the Liverpool crowd during tonight’s FA Cup game between Liverpool and Oldham. I should stress that this is only an allegation, coming mainly from Twitter, and mainly from a particularly odious (in my opinion) reporter in the name of Ollie Holt, who writes for the Mirror.

Now some of you may remember that I have written before about how Twitter has become too powerful in the world of instant media and gormless hacks all rushing to be the first to get an exclusive – even if they get the story hopelessly wrong, as the Daily Mail did when it wrongly reported that the accused in the Meredith Kercher case, Amanda Knox, had failed in her appeal – and even provided helpful yet entirely fabricated “statements” from prosecutors on the case.The excuse given by the Daily Mail for this error was that they routinely had two stories written up, in the event of possible different outcomes. What the article also made clear was that internet media sources such as the Mail were willing to put blatant fabrications into these stories, and report them as fact.

That was inherently wrong, and is why I do not trust any internet source of breaking news – it often turns out to be incorrect. But that’s getting slightly off into a different tangent, so back to the topic at hand.

Anyway, Twitter this evening is awash with people from all over the place rushing to be the first to condemn or defend things they didn’t really know about – like I said, the full facts haven’t emerged yet, and Ollie Holt is basking in the glow of spreading unhelpful unsubstantiated opinions using Twitter as his medium, whilst other people retweet and turn this into a juggernaut that may be difficult to stop – as tends to happen on Twitter with certain stories.

Meanwhile we have other journalists tweeting that no such racial abuse happened, and that Adeyemi was allegedly called a “Manc bastard” by a member of the Liverpool crowd. A journalist from the BBC also reported that no member of the crowd was arrested in connection with anything shouted at Adeyemi.

Who are people supposed to believe? The Mirror journo who is in all probability looking for a story where there may be nothing more than a misunderstanding over something shouted? And who wasn’t even at the game? Or someone who was actually at the game and in a better place to report on what happened?

It may be that Adeyemi misheard what the fan shouted. It may be that the fan did actually call Adeyemi a “black bastard” as opposed to a “Manc bastard” as understood by the reporter in the crowd who was near the situation. In either case, it most certainly does not help that newspapers and journalists use Twitter for so much of their dirty work.

Lord Justice Leveson is currently conducting an inquiry into the way that the print media as a whole do their daily business – I do hope that he includes a review of the online section as well as the print section, as I feel that there is a massive problem within this area regarding inaccurate reporting, unsubstantiated rumours being passed off as facts, and lazy journalism propping up ailing businesses.

We all know why newspapers take these courses of action instead of undertaking proper journalism – it’s to sell papers. Instant media means that in order to get a scoop, publishers need to take risks that they wouldn’t necessarily take if they had the time to fact-check their stories properly. Another example of this from recently is the story being run by the Independent alleging that Manchester United are preparing to sell Wayne Rooney. When asked about this story by Radio 5 Live, the journalist who wrote the story, James Lawton, admitted that his headline was not actually based in fact at any level, or sourced from anywhere at Manchester United. In other words (the words journalists hate to actually say), he made that up and tried to use possible tension over a fine handed to Rooney as the base for making such a claim.

Welcome to the fantastically accurate world of instant media, and long may it continue. That last sentence may or may not be accurate.

]]>https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/instant-media-raises-its-ugly-head-once-again/feed/0thatpeskysquirrelWhat Lessons Have The Riots Taught Us?https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/what-have-the-riots-taught-us/
https://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/what-have-the-riots-taught-us/#respondTue, 16 Aug 2011 02:24:32 +0000http://newsdiscontent.wordpress.com/?p=139On Monday 8th August, I (like many others across the country) watched in horror as the citizens of this country turned on it, and bit hard. I watched as young people of all types set fire to a car and pushed it into a wall. I watched the police standing back, not wanting to let the rioters and looters have their way, but unable to make a stand against them. I was amongst those who called for David Cameron to stop tipping Italian waitresses and come back to England to try and sort this mess out.

In the aftermath, I kind of wished he’d stayed on holiday and let someone else take charge.

It took a third night of rioting, the worst night, to force Cameron to abandon his holiday and return to chair a meeting of COBRA. Over those nights of rioting, the call came from the supposedly moderate people who weren’t out rioting to send the army in, to fire the water cannon at these “vermin”, to enforce shoot to kill rules. Moderation went out of the window during that week. The thing that struck me as ironic is that the exact same people who were calling for this treatment were the exact same people who denounced countries like Libya, Syria, Bahrain and China for taking those measures against their own citizens. I would have pointed that out to them but I fear the irony would have been lost on them.

With the return of Cameron (luckily just in time to say lots of things but too late to have any effect on the riots), we suddenly saw thousands more police on the streets of London. I’m sure Cameron would like us to believe it was all his doing, however I believe those numbers would have been arranged whilst the rioting on Monday night was ongoing and it became clear that they just didn’t have enough to deal with the situation. So Cameron came back, and said lots of things about everything at once and nothing in particular, and managed to annoy both the police and the general public with his lambasting of the way police handled the rioting.

Once again, in a matter of urgency for this country, Cameron has been caught on the back foot. He failed to get the public mood over the phone hacking scandal, he failed to get the mood over the NHS plans, he failed to get the mood over plans to sell acres of forests to private buyers. And he again failed to get the mood over how best to deal with the aftermath of these riots. Ed Miliband struck the right notes, calling for a major public inquiry into the causes and threatening to set that inquiry up himself if No.10 failed to acquiesce. For a weak Labour leader, these past few months have been nothing but strengthening both for his political image and for his self-confidence. He has been able to push Cameron into retreats on several occasions and, right now, looks more like the leader of this country than David Cameron. Although having said that, it is much easier to be asking the questions than it is to be answering them.

Today, both Cameron and Miliband made speeches about the situation the country finds itself in, and both leaders came out of their speeches looking like different people; Cameron came out looking much more like an old-fashioned right-wing Conservative rather than the liberal image he portrayed during his days in opposition; Ed came out looking like he had won the battle – he had said the right things, answered questions from young people properly and fairly, and acknowledged that whilst Labour had tried to make things better for the poorer people of the country, that it hadn’t been able to do so. In saying that, he has effectively stopped Cameron using that as a method of political attack. Miliband also very cleverly did not link the rioting to problems caused by current or previous administrations, unlike Louise Mensch who firmly believes that everything that is wrong with this country right now is the fault of Labour (“All social justice, and all progressive goals, depend upon Osborne steering us out of Labour’s disastrous mess”).

Both leaders were displaying roughly the same messages in their speeches, about the role that society as a whole had to play in solving these problems, yet it was hard to see past David Cameron’s rhetoric about policing, funding and numbers and his conclusions about the rioting and how to deal with them, which sound confused against his party’s plans for office. Ed Miliband scored a major one-up by quoting one of the Prime Minister’s earliest speeches as leader of the Conservatives:

Of course, not everyone who grows up in a deprived neighbourhood turns to crime – just as not everyone who grows up in a rich neighbourhood stays on the straight and narrow.

Individuals are responsible for their actions – and every individual has the choice between doing right and doing wrong. But there are connections between circumstances and behaviour.

Cameron, notedly, did not mention unemployment levels amongst young people. He did, however, mention Health and Safety laws and the Human Rights act. He makes it very clear that right now, he does not feel that poverty is a cause for the rioting. And whilst he may be slightly right over that, he has failed to recognise that there is not one single cause, and there is not one single answer. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, that all the possible causes mentioned by both sides need to be remedied. This needs to be done, for a start, by listening to those people who were affected by, and involved in, the riots. As Ed Miliband stated, to seek to explain is not to seek to excuse. Trying to understand why the riots happened does not mean we are giving amnesty to those who were involved. Understanding is the key, and should be the goal of all parties.

David Cameron’s measures, such as helping 120,000 of the country’s most troubled families, monitoring social networking sites, having plastic bullets and water cannon on standby, calling in a US “super-cop” to help and advise on riots (hang on, I thought the US looked to us for advice on crowd control…), have the feeling of nothing more than a sticking plaster. Covering up the wound in the faint hope it will heal itself. And this seems to be a recurring theme of this Prime Minister’s leadership. Not once have the Conservative Party at the heart of this Government looked to gain understanding about why things need to be done – in their minds, it’s all got to be done because Labour screwed everything up.

It’s time for a new message: Wake up, David, and smell the coffee. Britain is not broken, but it needs more than just lip-service.